Financially pinched West Covina cuts half of its maintenance division

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Employees from West Covina’s maintenance division sitting at the July 17 city council meeting to protest the city’s layoffs of 21 maintenance workers. (Photo by Kayiu Wong, San Gabriel Valley Tribune/SCNG)

They’re part of the team that cleans parks, repairs roads, cuts trees and generally tries to make West Covina tidy and beautiful. Now, they’re being dismissed to save money, and the community was not shy to show its outrage this week.

“With maintenance, you can’t tell what’s done — you can only tell what’s not done, and you’re about to see a lot not done in West Covina,” resident William Elliot told the City Council at its Tuesday meeting. “These guys arguably have the toughest job in the entire city, and thankless, and we owe them more than just cutting their department.”

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Last week, West Covina let go 15 full-time and six part-time employees in the city’s maintenance division — the latest cuts in the city’s two-month journey to plug its general fund deficit of $8.7 million dollars. The city has whittled the gap to a $1.9 million deficit and still needs to find another $1.1 million to replenish the city’s reserves, its rainy-day fund.

Although the 2018-19 budget was due at the end of last month — with the current fiscal year starting July 1 — the city is currently operating at last year’s spending levels.

The maintenance division layoffs amount to a yearly savings of around $215,000 for the city’s general fund and allows the city to redirect $1 million of earmarked dollars from the city’s special fund to other areas, Nikole Bresciani, West Covina’s assistant city manager, said in a phone interview.

In June, the City Council directed city staff to make 10 percent cuts to all departments’ budgets to close its financial gap.

With the number of layoffs, some perceive the Public Works Department as bearing larger than a 10 percent cut, but Bresciani said the numbers show otherwise: “The Public Works Department has an operating budget of $4.4 million, so that 10 percent cut would be $400,000 of cuts. The cut we proposed for the department is actually just $235,000,” Bresciani said.

The city already contracts for park maintenance, she added. Now, officials plan to outsource more work.

Before the cuts, the maintenance division had 37 full-time employees and seven part-time employees, she said. The layoffs will leave the city with 23 maintenance workers.

On Tuesday, the employees donned their orange uniforms in solidarity to protest the layoffs at the City Council meeting.

“We all need to work to provide for our families, for ourselves, and I don’t think it’s fair that we have to go through this because of other people’s actions and decisions,” Jorge Negrete, one of the 21 workers who are being let go, told the council.

Sammy Arvizu was hired only eight months ago. He said it’s upsetting to have to leave so suddenly.

“At least 10 employees have been hired in the last year, so I don’t understand why they would hire so many of us in such a short time period and then find out that it has contributed to their deficit,” Arvizu said in a phone interview. “It makes you feel like well, why did you hire me in the first place?”

The maintenance division employees will continue to speak out against the city’s decision at council meetings until the layoffs go into effect in September, Arvizu said.